The patriotic Iraqi website albasrah.net published on Monday an official statement by a spokesman for the Iraqi Baath Party concerning the rampage by Shi'i sectarians in western Baghdad’s al-Jihad neighborhood and other areas of the city in which some 60 Iraqis were killed.  Below is the translation of the entire statement as published there.

Statement by an authorized spokesman for the Baath Party concerning the crime committed in the al-Jihad neighborhood.

An official spokesman of the Iraqi Regional Culture and Information Bureau of the Arab Baath Socialist Party stated that the hideous crime committed by gangs loyal to Iran and with the encouragement and support of the US occupation forces is nothing but the latest chapter in the story of attempts to ignite a blind sectarian discord that will burn up everything and allow the occupation to turn the tables on the heads of the Iraqi people and stamp out their heroic Resistance.

The spokesman added that the Jaysh al-Mahdi [Mahdi Army], which is now the main tool being used by the American occupation and Iran, was the party that perpetrated this hideous crime, in pursuance of the role assigned it by Iran and the American occupation after the Badr Brigades failed to carry out this task on the one hand and now that it has taken on the role of carrying out crimes against the people of Iraq in the name of the Ministry of the Interior on the other hand.

Our Party condemns this ugly crime by the Jaysh al-Mahdi that took the lives of more than 60 children, women, elderly and young people who were murdered just because of the religious affiliation listed on their ID cards in the al-Jihad neighborhood as an act of vengeance against this militant neighborhood for its jihad against the occupation.  Our Party affirms that the armed patriotic Resistance will never retreat but rather will strengthen its jihadi struggle to expel the occupation, liberate Iraq and rid it of the stooges of Iran who serve the occupation and play the fundamental role alongside the Peshmergah militias and Ahmad Chelebi in killing our citizens.

The Jaysh al-Mahdi is directly responsible for this crime, having been commissioned by Iran in accordance with the announced agreement with America on the partition of Iraq, parceling it out between them.  This is a fact, not an allegation because thousands of Iraqi victims of this organization testify that this organization has transformed Saddam City into a frightful slaughter house in which hundreds of Iraqis are imprisoned and subjected to the most hideous types of deadly torture, after which their bodies are dumped in filthy water.  The criminal murder of the martyred attorney Khamis al-'Ubaydi is one of the most vicious examples of this criminal behavior of the Jaysh al-Mahdi.

The official spokesman of the Baath concluded by directing an appeal to all Iraqis to always keep their guns pointed exclusively at the occupation and the lackeys of the occupation and not to be drawn into the American-Iranian game that the Jaysh al-Mahdi is promoting, namely the game of igniting a sectarian war that will change the priorities of the Iraqi people from fighting the occupation and its stooges into a suicidal sectarian war.  The Baath fully believes that the only acceptable patriotic response to this crime is to escalate armed action against the occupation and the stooges of the occupation, and not to respond to sectarianism with sectarian logic.